This application incorporates by reference Taiwanese application serial No. 88117750, filed Oct. 14, 1999.
1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a power generator, and more particularly to a power generator for a digital cassette cartridge in a cassette player.
2. Description of the Related Art
Audio cassette players or audio cassette recorders are widely used in daily life, for example, the audio cassette players equipped in vehicles, portable cassette players, and high-fidelity audio equipment for home entertainment.
As information technology and Internet are in widespread use, a large amount of audio information is converted into digital form and compressed using different compression formats, such a Motion Picture Engineering Group Audio Layer 3 (MPEG audio layer 3 or MP3) format. The compressed digital audio files have the advantages of convenience of storage, transmission, processing and improving the quality of playback and recording. When it comes to playing back, these digital audio files must be decompressed and processed by a multi-media computer or dedicated digital playback equipment compliant to the compression format, such as MP3 player.
For the sake of playing back the digital audio files with the conventional audio cassette players, a Digital Cassette Cartridge was invented. A Digital Cassette Cartridge has a housing shaped like an ordinary cassette tape, and it is designed to fit conventional audio cassette players for playing back the digital audio files stored in this Digital Cassette Cartridge. The Digital Cassette Cartridge includes electronic devices, such as memory and processors, for the storage of digital audio files and conversion of digital audio files into an audio signal. The audio signal is transmitted to the audio cassette player that the Digital Cassette Cartridge is put into. Therefore, a power supply for the electronic devices must be included into the Digital Cassette Cartridge because the Digital Cassette Cartridge is put into the cassette player where an external power cable cannot connect. In regard to this implementation problem, a possible approach is to equip the Digital Cassette Cartridge with batteries. However, since the Digital Cassette Cartridge is small in size, it is not suitable to be equipped with batteries of high capacity of energy. Thus, if the time of playback audio data is longer than the time that the batteries can supply power for the Digital Cassette Cartridge, users are required to replace the batteries frequently with fully charged ones. It makes the use of the Digital Cassette Cartridge inconvenient and reduces the purchaser's demand to the Digital Cassette Cartridge.